An adventure in analog video, electronics, television history, Northeast Ohio, and whatever else I feel like babbling about…

Tag Archives: vintage electronics

I’m gearing up for October, cause you know, Halloween and all that. The goal is to have one ‘spooky’ post per week, but we’ll see. ANYWAY, this, this is just too amazing to not get an update out of. Besides, I should probably write something for September, huh?

After a long dry spell, my electronic finds have picked up as of late, as a couple of my recent postings demonstrate. This one, however, handily tops ’em all. Indeed, while this may not be my favorite, this is far and away the most high-end VCR in my not-inconsiderable collection. Behold: The Panasonic AG-1970 S-VHS VCR! That’s it up above, man! I have other S-VHS VCRs (in fact, my first was nearly four years ago), but none can hold a candle to this monster. With it, I have, however tenuously, stepped into the professional world of VCRs.

Truth be told, I didn’t find this myself. Rather, my good friend Jesse (who y’all met here) came across it at a local thrift store, and gave me a buzz. He picked it up on the evening of August 18th, and the tag on it stated it had been put on the 16th. My last visit there had been on the 15th. I could have very easily missed out on this had the wrong person waltzed in over those intervening days, but luckily Jesse was the right person, and he very kindly picked it up for me. The wait was actually beneficial too; the AG-1970 was originally priced at $20, then marked down to $10, and Jesse used a 20% discount coupon on top that. Grand total? $8 + tax. You can not beat that; S-VHS decks almost never show up in-person around here, and when they do, they’re not the mega-high-end ones like this (such as the example linked above). The least I could do was give Jesse a straight $10 for his troubles.

This store generally prices their VCRs between $5 and $10, and lately, they’ve been hitting $5 pretty consistently. The fact the AG-1970 was initially priced so high shows that just from outside appearances alone, this thing is (or was) special. Even at the high of $20, that’s not a bad price, but $8? Why, that’s a veritable bargain buck bill!

Here’s the thing: I’m now heading into what is basically foreign territory for me. I’m the first to admit it. I know my way around regular VHS VCRs okay, but here, much of this is all new to me. So, here more than ever, I invite people with the know-how to hit up the comments section, please!

A closer look the front-panel. My pictures actually make things look worse than they are; my AG-1970 is a little dusty, a little dirty, but for the most part it’s in really nice shape. You’re just gonna have to take my word on this. I probably should have wiped it down with something before starting this post, but meh, let’s say it’s in “as found” condition, okay?

This was a “Prosumer” unit. That is, it was commercially available to you and I and Johnny-runs-his-mouth over there, but we couldn’t have just walked into any brick-and-mortar electronics store to get it; no no, from how I understand it, these were available at stores specifically specializing in higher-end electronics. I couldn’t find much info regarding the pricing, but one blurb I saw mentioned it retailing for a whopping $1900! “Pro Line” indeed!

“It’s like a battle station!” – My brother, upon my showing him the contents of the cool fold-down door. The flash on my camera makes this look grimier than it really is.

Open the front panel, and that’s where the magic of the machine is evident. This wasn’t just a VCR for recording and playing a videotape in the best quality (then) possible, this was a legit editing station! With feature upon feature (some of which, I’m first to admit, I don’t know the exact function of), this was the kind of machine you’d want for actual video projects. Even though this was a consumer model, I can see it being viewed as more of an industrial unit by schools, businesses, and the like.

No doubt about it, this thing was a beast. There’s quite a few options for audio preferences, as well as the expected video toggles; I was a little surprised to see the switch for SP or SLP recording, but no LP. When you’re shelling out nearly two grand for a model of this nature, why not give any and all recording outputs possible?

I like the sliding tabs for picture sharpness and headphone jack volume, and the dual sliding tabs for the Hi-Fi audio recording levels.

There’s also a switch labeled “TBC.” No, it’s not a misspelling of Elvis’ Memphis Mafia Motto (alliteration); rather it stands for “Time Base Correction.” This is important: TBC can drastically correct / stabilize the picture of a videotape. Wikipedia has a decent write-up on the feature. Because I’m an admitted neophyte in this area, evidently another, external TBC is needed to get the absolute best picture quality, but honestly, that’s probably heading into a zone I’d never notice much of a difference in. I like a good VHS picture, but I’m not really a full-fledged videophile.

Speaking of which, I duly went about researching this deck upon acquirement. This research took me into legit videophile forums; I mean, there were guys debating aspects of these VCRs that pretty much made my head swim. That’s not a slam on anyone; I’m endlessly impressed with these guys that (seemingly) so effortlessly know all the ins and outs of S-VHS. Anyway, the general consensus seems to be that the AG-1970 was good for its time, but the succeeding AG-1980 is the better unit from an abilities and picture-quality standpoint, though the AG-1970 seems to be more reliably-built.

Hey, you throw an AG-1980 at me for $10, I’ll snap it up with extreme fervor. But until then, I’m going to be happy with my AG-1970.

More coolness as we head to the right. Excuse the glare; the display panel is apparently housed in the most reflective surface in the universe. I dig the cool vertical audio level readouts.

The picture doesn’t show it very well, but the display is actually a bit on the dim side. It’s definitely readable, and if you had the lights out, you could probably see what’s going on from where you sat. But, it really should be brighter than it is; I hope it’s not a power supply issue.

Also: Jog shuttle! I’m a sucker for these things; even when a deck doesn’t really need one, it’s still improved by its presence, as far as I’m concerned. ‘Course, the AG-1970 does need the jog, not only because of the functions it provides but also because it’s the AG-1970 and anything less than a jog shuttle would not be fitting for a machine of this stature.

Okay, so right about here is where I’d have a screenshot of something playing on the AG-1970; show the machine in action. I can’t do that though, and here’s why: The VCR certainly appears to work perfectly, and every function I tested appeared to do its appropriate thing, at least as far as the display, uh, displayed. However, I can’t be sure, because I couldn’t get a picture to show up! Not that I think the machine is broken or anything like that; the counter is telling me that something is being read here.

Y’see, what I’m doing it plugging it into the front jacks of the VCR I have hooked up to the PC; that’s normally how I do my testing with new old decks. BUT, because this Prosumer stuff is all totally new to me, for all I know that could just be all wrong. You experts are gonna have to (nicely) let me know, because I don’t have the manual or the expertise to know what, if anything, I’m doing wrong.

But you know what? Let’s say there’s something wrong with a capacitor or whatever, and that’s why I’m not getting a picture. I almost don’t care, because at $8, the AG-1970 was still a monumental bargain. I can always get it repaired if need be; in fact, I’d rather have it gone over from top to bottom, make sure it’s in full working order, before I start regularly using it.

The back of the unit. Plugs and whatnot, obviously. Actually, I’m a little surprised there’s not more of ’em. There’s the expected antenna jacks, and AV jacks, and the channel selector switch. All pretty par for the course.

The really nice feature is the S-Video outputs and inputs though; was there a higher mode of output than that back in the early-1990s? Was composite video around yet? Super Nintendo had S-Video; that’s gotta count for somethin’!

You’ll notice in the title for the post, I listed the date as “circa-1993.” Near as I can tell from my research, that’s around the time this machine was out. There’s no date on the back of this deck, so yeah, circa-1993.

Final proof this thing was mighty high-end? A big, thick, detachable power cord.

Whether it works correctly or not almost (almost) doesn’t matter; just having the Panasonic AG-1970 S-VHS VCR is enough for me. Look at it up there! Just look at it! It’s not just an S-VHS VCR, it’s a professional S-VHS VCR! It’s heavy duty! It’s feature-packed! It’s built like a tank! And it supposedly has really, really nice picture quality! This thing is my new good friend!

Thanks once again to my pal Jesse for grabbing this VCR for me! It’s a fine addition to my collection! (And fodder for my dumb blog is always nice, too.)

You know, as of late I’ve been neglecting the whole “old electronics” portion of this blog quite a bit. This was brought into a particularly sharp focus recently by a spate of comments on my older posts regarding the subject. The answer was clear: People like reading about this stuff, but even before that I had noticed that those posts tend to get decent viewership.

So, I knew I needed to write about something electronic-related again. The timing of this realization turned out to be fortuitous, because look what I brought home from the State Road Goodwill just last night: From October 1992, it’s a Kodak Photo CD player! A Photo CD player! Just look at it up there! It’s the PCD-250, and as an artifact of 1990s technology, it’s tough to beat…

…Which is good, because beyond longingly gazing at it, I can’t find much other practical use for the beast.

(As such, this isn’t going to be a super long post.)

You can click on any of these pics for a larger view, which will hopefully alleviate the symptoms of my inability to find a decent viewing angle to snap these shots. (Hey, I did the best I could.) Above is a closer, full-on view of the control panel. Nothing too out of the ordinary; you’ve got your starts, stops, opens, closes, shuffles, and so on. Without closer inspection, one may very well think it’s an ordinary CD or even DVD player. Indeed, Goodwill had this notated as just a CD player on their price tag. That was technically correct, especially in this day and age, but back when it first released, there was a bit more to it than that.

Just what is a Photo CD system, and why am I so enamored by it? Wikipedia has a wonderfully detailed write-up on the line, but the short of it is that in the time before digital cameras and DVDs and what have you, the Kodak Photo CD system allowed you to view your photos, your very own homemade photographs, on television. Think of it as an evolution and/or offshoot of the vacation slides people used to bore their friends and family with.

A DVD-era mindset would say that you could burn a CD loaded with pictures for play on one of these things, but that mindset would be deadwrong. Remember, this is early-1990s technology; burning a CD on your computer wasn’t exactly as matter-of-fact then as it is now. (Or was, what with CDs seemingly being on their way out – much to my chagrin.)

So how did you get your sad snapshots from the camera to disc to player? Kodak had Photo CD centers, and much like you dropping off film to be developed (remember when you had to do that? I do!), you’d take your precious cargo to one to be transferred to CD, and from there, you could view digital slides of all the stupid things you thought were worth archiving digitally – including those embarrassing early-1990s fashions that would soon come back to haunt you somethin’ fierce.

It’s the kind of technology that’s so commonplace nowadays, I wouldn’t think twice about burning a bunch of my idiotic photos to disc and watching them on my DVD player (if I had that much time to waste on my hands, and luckily I’m not quite there…yet). But for 1992, this was a neat piece of tech. Unfortunately, the transitory nature of electronics, and the introduction of affordable digital cameras and PC photo formats, and so on and so forth, it all eventually doomed the line, and while it limped along for several years, it was never quite a rousing success.

Kodak Photo CD players used their own compact disc format, and while I initially figured maybe burning some JPEGs or something to CD and throwing it in would be enough to properly test the machine, a quick online search told me I was severely mistaken. Apparently there are ways to mimic the format and burn to CD, but a cursory glance at such prospects left my head swimming just enough to where I abandoned the idea. (Besides, I don’t know if that’s technically legal or not.) So, for all intents and purposes, the Photo CD aspect of this unit, the main reason it was put into production, is barred to me.

Still, the thing powered up, and aside from the CD-drawer not quite closing all the way without a little help from the user, it appeared to be fully-functional. I have no reason to doubt the Photo CD portion still runs correctly, but near as I can tell, I have no way of proving it. And to make matters worse, upon plugging in and powering on, nothing shows up on-screen, so no neato screencaps for y’all, either.

About the only thing I can do with the machine is play audio CDs. Luckily, I had a spare copy of Bruce Springsteen’s Human Touch lying around, and what better way to test a 1992 piece of technology than with a 1992 album? So in it went!

Above: You can see the player gives a readout of the total CD running length, as you’d expect, and it does run audio pretty well. Human Touch sounded really nice while playing here; there was an odd, I don’t know, kinda ‘thumping’ sound on what seemed to me to be higher notes, but for all I know that was just a result of the chords I was using. I could have listened to the whole album this way and not been bothered, so obviously it was a pretty minor issue. Maybe the lens just needs a cleaning, I don’t know. I suppose it doesn’t really matter though, does it?

(On a side note: Human Touch isn’t one of Springsteen’s more well-regarded albums, especially when compared to Lucky Town which released on the exact same day. But personally, I’ve never found it that bad. There are some weak moments for sure, and the sound belies the labored late-1980s/early-1990s production time, but I maintain that had he merely pruned it of two, three, or maybe even four of the lesser tracks, there would be a more positive lasting image of the album. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s The River Part II or anything, but nevertheless, methinks there’s enough good stuff on Human Touch to merit a purchase. I’ve always liked it as a whole, and as an artifact of 1992, well, to me it’s wildly appropriate to play on a Kodak Photo CD system, okay?)

Around the back of the machine, you’ve got some standard inputs and outputs. RF out, antenna in, your red-white-yellow jacks, a channels 3 or 4 selector, and the part I found most interesting, an S-Video jack.

S-Video was around, obviously, but I don’t think it had quite become an industry standard yet, so to see it implemented by Kodak was a nice touch. Hey Photo CD system, you’re on the same page as Super Nintendo! Well done!

Next: Hooray for poorly-lighted and too-blurry photos! This isn’t the kind of thing I’d want playing on my Photo CD system!

Still, there’s your proof: October 1992. Did you think I was lying? I wasn’t.

Geez man, October 1992; I was all of six-years-old! I didn’t even have my Super Nintendo yet! (That would come at Christmas ’92.) Maybe one of the coolest things about picking up old technology like this nowadays isn’t so much what it can or can’t do, but rather it’s the ability to look back and realize this was what was cutting-edge then! Sure, it’s been hugely, hugely supplanted in the years since, but like I said before, that’s just the transitory nature of the beast.

So there you have it, the newest addition to my big giant stack of electronics: A Kodak Photo CD system from October 1992. I can’t really do much with it, except play audio CDs (and I’ve got plenty of other devices that can handle that), but as a piece of early-90s tech, I still like having it. I can’t promise I’ll ever do much more with it, and I’m a little disappointed I can’t (easily) play photos on it, even if for no other reason than to be as arbitrary as possible, but for only $5 I say it was still worth adding to my pile of junk electronics collection.

I’ve been a busy Video Hunter this past month, and the sad fact of the matter is I’ve had neither the time nor, to be quite honest, the inclination to put together a ‘big’ article. The reasons for this are several, though I won’t bother to go in to them. Still, I wanted to get something up before April ended, lest y’all think I abandoned the site and, by extension, you. Never let it be said that I don’t care, because I do, I do care!

Anyway, this isn’t going to be a long post, and truth be told, you can consider it more of a stop-gap entry than anything. BUT, that doesn’t mean I don’t like the subject, because I most certainly do. Dig this: From early 1985 (February 26, as per the back), it’s one of Panasonic’s famous Omnivision VHS VCRs, and boy, is this one technologically advanced – well, it was 32 years ago, anyway. Behold the PV-1730! A slick, feature-packed Hi-Fi stereo deck that had the capability to blow your face off – well, it did 32 years ago, anyway.

The best way I can describe this VCR is “heavy duty.” It just feels like a real product, a high-tech, ostensibly end-all be-all addition to the home entertainment center. And that silver casing that flies in the face of the predominantly-black styles of so, so many other VCRs? Looks sharp, man. Is it wrong that I can see this machine being used as decoration in some episode of Miami Vice? Maybe it was.

However, this deck doesn’t quite work correctly, though it mostly does; it powers up, it registers whatever button I slam my paws against, it fast-forwards, it rewinds. The only problem is it doesn’t like to play. Not consistently, anyway. Sometimes I can get it to go and it will run for a period before stopping, but other times it will play for only a moment or two before it takes a powder. I have several ideas as to what the problem is, but it’s not like this is going to be my daily driver; honestly, I picked this machine up simply because of the supreme mid-1980s-ness it exudes. I didn’t even bother taking a screencaps of something playing on it, because it just doesn’t matter.

(So why even bring it home? I love the the era of electronics it so deftly defines, and besides, even if it doesn’t work 100% right now, I always grab these with an eye towards getting them repaired at some unknown point in the future. But really, it all comes to down to the looks and features – even if none of them really mean anything in this day and age. It’s this same mentality that got me my swanky Sylvania VCR.)

Luckily, I got the thing to play for most of my picture-taking session. The display is pretty nice and bright, and while I hate the old school “counter” system, this machine rectifies that with giving the exact minutes and seconds too, which makes it my friend.

You can barely see it, but there’s a sticker stating this was one of Panasonic’s “Tech 4” models, always a welcome sight to yours truly. Indeed, one of the best VCRs I ever found was a 1986 Omnivision “Tech 4” that works flawlessly and may have even more features than this deck. I keep that one on a figurative pedestal because I’m weird.

See that panel at the bottom? It opens up, and oh what it harbors just beneath the hood…

BOOM.

Here’s your station for “One-Touch Recording,” along with the ability to set the OTR timer, as you’d expect. Also, not one but two tracking-control knobs, nifty left and right audio controls, a switch for recording in all three speeds, and Dolby noise reduction.

Now see, I didn’t grow up with, or at least didn’t grow up using, VCRs with such a now-convoluted recording scheme; I came around, thankfully, when that set-up had been reduced to on-screen displays and programmed with the remote. As such, the thought of setting a timer with this system kinda makes my head swim. I could have mastered it, I could still master it, but luckily, I’ll never have to!

Hold on, there’s more to it!

On top of the unit there’s a flip-up panel with controls for picture sharpness, regular TV or cable TV, display options, and so on. Sorry this pic is alternately too bright and too dark; this was about as satisfactory a picture as I was going to get.

Also, V-Lock for SP and SLP? That’s a new one on me. They’re probably found on some of my other VCRs, but if so, I never paid much attention – what exactly is that? “Vertical Lock?” Is that like the “Vertical Hold” on old TVs?

You know what attracted me most to this unit when I first came across it? That “Hi-Fi Audio HD” declaration above. It may not mean anything anymore, but man does that just sound completely top-of-the-line for the time. For the time? Heck, to me that still sounds cool!

Besides the ‘normal’ controls for playing and recording, you’ve also got plenty of audio features, including audio dub, and needless to say, the audio levels meter I always love seeing on these old models.

Along the back are the expected microphone inputs and whatnot and the television hook-ups, but what I really get a kick out of is the “Pay TV” knob; I’m not even sure what it does, but it almost doesn’t matter, because it’s such a neat mid-1980s throwback. I said the same thing about the previously-linked Sylvania VCR, so anyone with the appropriate knowledge wanna fill me in? Hit the comments section!

More inputs/outputs, including handy ports for a camera. The “Editing” plug has me curious, though the declaration of “See Manual” feels like a diss; I don’t have the manual, VCR! Thrift store finds rarely include them, and as such I’m performing a lot of guesswork (such as it is) with some of these features. There’s probably a PDF of the manual online somewhere, but frankly, searching it out is too much work for a stop-gap post that approximately three people are going to read anyway.

So, just where did I get this beast? I honestly couldn’t remember until I dug the machine out and noticed the “$8.00 Y” price written in marker. “Y” stood for “Yellow,” which means I got this from some Village Thrift somewhere. Evidently I never did much with this machine upon getting it home, since I hadn’t even bothered to clean that off! Nope, it had just been sitting in my stack of VCRs, staring at me, day in, day out, wondering why I shun it so. Until today anyway, when I decided I should probably write a token post for April 2017.

So there it is, a Panasonic VHS VCR, loaded with options and still looking darn cool to boot. This was one of those finds I buy based solely on looks, features and “aura.” I grab things like this all the time, and even though I usually never do all that much with them, I love having them, simply because of the era in electronics that they represent.